Alice. That's all I'm permitted to say.

Ch. 5

“Shouldn’t we have knocked?” I asked and she ignored me. The interior of the house was just as old-fashioned as the outside and I instantly liked it. This grandfather of Alice’s had good taste. When I looked back, Alice had begun to run up the stairs, making loud squeaky noises with each step. “Wait for me!” I yelled, and she laughed, running faster. She was about six steps ahead of me and when I reached the top of the stairs, Alice was no where to be seen. The upper floor of the house was covered with doors. She could of gone into any of them. “Don’t panic,” I told myself, “let’s just think logically. She probably didn’t close a door all the way in her hurry.” I scanned the doors. One of the doors on the far right was opened a crack. “Alice?” I received a stifled laugh as my answer. I took another step in. It was too dark to see a thing. “Alice!” Another laugh, but it didn’t sound like Alice’s. And now that I thought about it, the one before that hadn’t really either... I began to whistle and walked out of the room, then full-out running once I reached the stairs, face planting into the last step. I looked up to the laughing face of Alice. Then I noticed someone else next to her. They were all wrinkly and smelled of sawdust. “Cassidy,” Alice said between laughs, “meet my granddaddy Alex.” “HI,” I scrambled off the ground with as much dignity as I could muster. “My name is Cassidy Owens.” I stuck out a now dust covered hand and he looked at me disapprovingly at first before shaking my hand. “Couldn’t find the bathroom, huh.” He said, his voice serious for a few seconds before I saw he was grinning from ear to ear and we both began laughing. His laugh was exactly like Madeline’s except for the fact that his voice was quite a bit deeper. I couldn’t understand why Alice hated him so much, and then I saw it: the jealousy in her eyes.